The cost of activism against Israel for the citizens of Gijon

The recent publication of a call for subsidies by the City Council of Gijón shows again the fixation of said Council with questionable projects related to the “Palestinian cause” and the laxity with which it donates the taxpayers’ money to it. It would be worthwhile to remind the citizens of Gijón that with these projects they are taxed doubly for the aid given to international solidarity: the first, the part of their taxes assigned in the State Budget to that end, like the rest of Spanish citizens.

But apart from that the City Council of Gijón decides to spend its citizens’ money, not on local matters typical of a Town Hall, and that neither the Spanish government, nor any other institution will pay for, but on more aid for other countries.

And when choosing on whom to spend that money that they seem to not know how to spend they don’t look for the most deprived countries, nor the victims of the worst conflicts. They choose to give no less than 100,000 Euros only for Palestine.

According to the Multidimensional Poverty Index (used internationally by development aid agencies) up to 90 countries have worse indicators than those presented by the Palestinian Territories! They have a similar score to that of Serbia, Bosnia or Thailand and better than that of Mexico, Colombia or Brazil! What famine or humanitarian crisis requires that aid from the citizens of Gijón for a Palestinian population that already receives an absolutely disproportionate international aid per capita, including most of the UN’s budget for refugees, and with whom neither Asturias nor Spain have particularly close bonds?

Without going to farther places, it is surprising the focus on that specific and relatively calm area of the Middle East compared with other current conflicts such as Iraq, Yemen, Kurdistan or Syria. In this last case, there are an estimated half a million dead and hundreds of thousands of displaced persons. But those poor people do not have in the City Council of Gijón the friends that the favoured Palestinians seem to have.

Perhaps the final reason for all of this is that in reality it is not a matter of tending to urgent needs, but of fuelling the anti-Israeli obsession of many of those who still have as a puppet the mayoress Carmen Moriyón.

The aid is not given normally to brave human rights activists like Bassem Eid, victims of the persecution of the Palestinian institutions. The organizations that traditionally receive this aid really do not care about the Palestinians. Their only true cause is the destruction of Israel. And for this they have built a millionaire industry based on public subsidies, like the one mentioned here. These subsidies usually end up, on the one hand, as salaries for their activists, typically associated with groups of the orbit of IU-Podemos, and on the other hand, as collaborations with shell corporations of terrorist groups.

Having identified in detail these groups, we announce that we will watch very closely the appointment of those donations for any sign that the beneficiaries do not meet the minimum criteria of eligibility, for promoting anti-Semite hate and glorifying terrorism, or if they have links with terrorist organizations. If that is so, the City Council of Gijón and its councillors would incur in serious civil and criminal responsibilities that ACOM would immediately denounce.

It is worth remembering that the groups that tend to magically benefit from these subsidies, city council after city council and year after year, are the same ones that have promoted the boycott against Israel in city councils such as Avilés, Gijón or Langreo. That boycott has already been declared illegal and unconstitutional in 13 judgements up to now, among others the ruling of the High Court of Justice of Asturias. Those are the groups that with the active or passive support of Foro, PSOE and Podemos in Gijón managed to disgrace the city internationally until the unsustainable situation forced them to rectify when the damage was already done.

It seems that the mayoress Moriyón, in her permanent drift, does not think that she has disgraced the name of Gijón enough. Or she continues to have shameful debts with the radicals she decides to shower again with everybody’s money.

We compel the civil society of Asturias to participate in the control of these subsidies that come from their taxes to stop the flow that fuels the interests and opaque influences that seem to exist between the BDS anti-Semite network and the City Council of Gijón.